On 26 October 1910, nine years after the oil baron John D. Rockefeller opened the first research facility in the US devoted exclusively to experimental medicine, the Rockefeller Institute for Medical Research in New York (now Rockefeller University) admitted the country’s first research participant in a hospital dedicated completely to clinical studies. Conceived as a place where patient care and laboratory investigations of disease would complement each other, the hospital was home to the development of methadone treatment of heroin addiction and the discovery of autoantibodies in rheumatoid arthritis and lupus, among other findings. The hospital also served as a model for dozens of other clinical research centers, including the US National Institutes of Health’s own Clinical Center, which opened its doors in 1953.

Emeritus professor Jules Hirsch, a metabolism researcher who joined Rockefeller in 1954, has had a front-row seat for more than half of Rockefeller University Hospital’s 100-year history, including four years as the hospital’s physician-in-chief and 12 years heading up its institutional review board. As the hospital gears up to celebrate its centennial anniversary later this month, I sat down with Hirsch in his office at the Upper East Side hospital to discuss the clinical center’s impact on biomedical research and education. (Click here to continue reading)

Image courtesy of Rockefeller University press office